


Happily Ever After?

by A_Damned_Scientist



Category: Farscape
Genre: AU, F/M, Pregnancy, challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Damned_Scientist/pseuds/A_Damned_Scientist
Summary: After A Human Reaction, there is no stasis for the pregnancy.





	Happily Ever After?

**Author's Note:**

> My response to JJs “Aeryn is pregnant after AHR” challenge on Terrafirmascapers.com Warning and rating for language, but pretty much nothing else.  
No beta this time, and still no money made.

**Happily Ever After?**

“Here you are!” John called out to Aeryn as he found her beating seventeen shades of shit out of her punchbag in the makeshift gym. She barely acknowledged him, continuing with her routine as though he wasn’t there and hadn’t said anything. Nothing new there, John reflected with growing annoyance. She was always ignoring him, or arguing with him. She had been especially distant from him in the days since their return, a few days previously, from the Ancient’s false Earth.

“Your comms on the blink? We called you three times for dinner!” John tried again, positioning himself on the far side of the dummy and bracing it against her blows. Thud. Thud thud. Thud thud thud. She was probably furious with him about pointing a gun at her on the false Erp and then running off after they had spent most of the night frelling like bunnies.

“Not hungry!” She growled, raining another series of blows on the bag, blows which would have done severe injury to a sentient being. John made a point of holding the bag firmly between them. He even thought about exercising some injury-saving discretion and leaving it at that, but then, they needed to talk this out. But first, they needed to talk, period. And Aeryn wasn’t talking. Thud thud.

“No? Well, next time reply. Its kinda rude not to,” he scolded her, trying to provoke a verbal reaction.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” She yelled with feeling, raining a flurry of particularly vicious blows on the workout dummy before pausing and leaning against it. He let her catch her breath. Maybe then she would be ready to talk?

Then to John’s utter surprise, and mild horror, she threw up violently onto the punchbag. Aeryn was never sick! What was going on?

He was at her side in a flash, the urge to help her overcoming the fear of what harm she might do to him if he did. To his surprise and relief, she didn’t offer violence but instead she slumped into his arms. It must be really serious! Little Miss Independent rarely allowed herself to show him such vulnerability or accepted his support.

“Baby, you’re burning up!” He announced stroking her hair back from her brow, horrified to find that she was uncharacteristically warm beneath his touch. As his thoughts raced around the horrors of heat delirium, his left arm circled her waist, the better to hold her up.

That was when he noticed: Aeryn’s washboard stomach, with those astonishingly defined abs he had been marvelling at just days earlier during their night of passion, now sported a distinct yet firm swelling.

What the frell?

Microts ticked by as he tried to process what was going on with Aeryn. Sickness…. A swelling belly… What it could mean? Aeryn remained slumped against him, for whatever un-Aeryn-like reason allowing him to trace the curve of her belly, allowing him to confirm that something about her was different. It was like she was pregnant, but it had only been a few days. She stared at him with big, expressive yet enigmatic eyes. There was a pregnant pause.

“Aeryn, you’re….”

“I’m pregnant, Crichton. At least I think I am. We ought to get Zhann can confirm it, I suppose…” she announced with faux stoic calm. He could almost feel the shrug in her voice. Her gaze remained locked on his. John felt totally discombobulated and, for once, momentarily speechless.

“But… how?” John asked finally, feeling rather stupid as soon as the words had passed his lips. By having sex, of course, Johnny boy, a small voice informed him. Aeryn ignored the opportunity to mock him. Maybe she had other things on her mind?

“My contraceptive implant must have failed. On the false Erp…” for some irrational, animalistic reason John realised that the very thought that he might have impregnated Aeryn, and on their first time together, too, was giving him a spontaneous erection – all the blood truly was rushing from his head. And the way he was supporting her, he was sure she would be feeling it too.

“But…. You feel a few months… monens… along. We only…. A few days ago….” He almost asked if it was his, but bit back the thought unasked. Who the frell else’s might it be, after all? And a human woman would metaphorically kill him for even asking. With Aeryn the metaphorical bit might just become literal.

“In a Peacekeeper female assigned to frontline combat, such as myself, pregnancies are geometric, Crichton,” she sighed. He wasn’t quite sure whether she was sighing at the information she was imparting or at his ignorance. “In order that soldiers are not out of their units for too long.”

“Geometric?” John frowned, turning her gently in his arms so that they could continue their conversation face to face, and also so that his hard-on wasn’t so embarrassingly obviously pressing against her buttocks. Now it was pressed against her belly. Way to go, John, sure she won’t notice that, his small internal voice mocked him.“Please tell me that means were going to be having a mathematician?”

“A soldier, more likely,” she spoke slowly and with a slight smile now. “But I will be having it within a matter of solar days.”

“That’s… that’s great news, Aeryn.” He wrapped her closer into his embrace and kissed her. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t kiss him back.

“I don’t see how,” she replied, clearly not sharing his excitement. “We are on the run, we have no medical facilities, and who will look after it?”

“We will!”

“We will?” She scowled. He could see she’d take some convincing. “Crichton, where I come from, infants are placed straight into a crèche, the parent has little or nothing to do with them from then on. I myself resolved never to go on the Peacekeeper breeding roster. So I don’t want a narl. And I wouldn’t know what to do with it even if I did!”

“Well, where I come from its very different,” he pressed his forehead against hers and rubbed his nose against her more regal air intake. “So you’ll have me. And Zhaan and D’Argo will help, I know they will.”

“You’d… help?” John was amazed to find she seemed genuinely surprised at the very idea. “Why?”

“Of course I would! It’s my kid too, remember!?” She frowned, looking genuinely perplexed. “Besides, where I come from its called stepping up and doing the right thing.” He regretted the words almost the instant he uttered them She glared at him now. Then, to his further horror, she seemed to harden her attitude further, a dark angry look coming over her features and she pushed away from him slightly.

“I don’t need or want your sympathy, Crichton,” she snapped. Oh frell, he’d done it now!

“Aeryn… it’s not… sympathy. Don’t Sebaceans… The ones who aren’t Peacekeepers… marry and have families?” He tried, stroking her brow again.

“MARRY!?” Her eyes went wide with shock and she pushed back further from him. “It was one frell, Crichton!”

“Actually, It was about half a dozen, as I remember it,” he couldn’t help but grin at her. Finally her stony face cracked just a little as she allowed herself the smallest, rueful smile in response.

“It… may have been,” she confirmed with a shrug her fingers playing on his biceps, tracing the lines of his muscles as she eased back towards him. “For you. I lost count.” She grinned radiantly. He couldn’t help but grin back. “But that still doesn’t mean…” her visage hardened and her voice trembled. Her eyes darted from right to left, like a startled animal about to bolt.

“This baby is going to bring us together, Aeryn.” He cupped her head in his hands, forcing her to hold eye contact with him. With her big eyes and quivering, soft, full lips she looked terrified. Excited, but terrified.

“How? I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to have to make some big changes.”

“What like?” She asked nervously.

“Well, to start with, sharing quarters will help when the baby wakes up at night,” he ventured, trying to keep things practical, not to scare her further.

“And it will also enable us to have daily sex?” She queried, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah, sure. Never thought about that,” he lied unconvincingly, grinning ridiculously. Her hand landed on his buttock and pulled their hips tightly against each other.

“Then why do you have a pulse pistol in your pocket?” She arched a snarky eyebrow.

“Look, we can talk about all of this later if you want..?” He paused as their noses rubbed softly to and fro against each other. “We will talk about all of this later. But the important thing right now is that you know I am here for you. You and our baby.”

“John, you understand I know very little about pregnancies or babies?” John nodded. This caused more rather delightful nose rubbing. To say nothing of the grinding taking place down below. “So can I ask you something?” He nodded again. This time some soft forehead contact was added to the mix. John wasn’t complaining. “As humans and sebaceans seem very similar, even to the point, it seems, of being able to bear offspring together… Is it normal for pregnant human females to crave sex with the father of their offspring?” She finished with a lopsided half grin, her eyes darting playfully from his eyes to where her fingers were stroking his shoulder and then back again to his face.

John’s brain practically short circuited. Was Aeryn Sun propositioning him? Her words and the look on her face very much indicated that she was. A tiny, rational and nerdy part of his mind told him that yes, it was a perfectly normal and well-known phenomenon, and was in fact part of an evolved behaviour to enhance pair bonding. However, the bombardier in his Calvins had already taken control of John Crichton for the duration of the bombing run.

“Oh, you bet!” He grinned back at her, adding some soft, exploratory kisses into the mix, which seemed to go down with Aeryn very well. Very well indeed. Her lips parted and she kissed him back.

“Do you still have that summer dress from Earth?” John breathed in her ear as he nibbled it.

“Mm hmm,” she growled back with a long, slow nod, enabling him to plant a hickey on her neck. That caused her to gasp excitedly. “In my quarters.” And in that moment John Crichton knew, he just knew in the very core of his being, that although there might be many troubles ahead, he, Aeryn and their offspring would ultimately be just fine.

“Then let’s go?” He responded, somewhat superfluously, as she had already snagged his hand and was pulling him towards the door.

  
The end?

**Author's Note:**

> The question mark in the title is because I am not sure whether it would be Happy Ever After at this point for them. They had a long way to go to be a functional couple, and a baby at this point might have driven them in an entirely different direction. But Im not going to dwell on that.


End file.
